Las Comunidades Autónomas y su participación en la UE

Deleuze & Guattari (1987) have introduced us to the idea of the rhizome. As described previously, a rhizome accords with its botanical reference; it is a type of stem that expands underground horizontally, sending down roots and pushing up shoots that arise and proliferate not from a network. Within a rhizome there are only lines: dimensional lines of segmentarity and stratification and lines of flight as ‘the maximum dimension after which the

nature’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p.21). Deleuze & Guattari use the term

‘deterritorialization’ to explain this process of metamorphosis: deterritorialization is, quite literally, the process by which one leaves the territory or moves out of segmentarity and

stratification. While deterritorialization can occur, so can ‘reterritorialization’: a compensation that obstructs or segments the line of flight beyond the territory. Anything can reterritorialize, that is, ‘stand for’ the lost territory.

We can use these ideas of deterritorialization and reterritorialization to think about the consequences of the connection between the SGR LLEN ERG and the Beacon Foundation. Here, the Jobs 4 Kids Campaign is the line of deterritorialization – a line intended to break away from segmentarity of the range of initiatives in expanding the active involvement of industry in the emerging post compulsory education training and employment sector that was the strategic imperative of SGR LLEN. At the point of the launch the Campaign was reterritorialized: not only captured by the signifier No Dole Program but captured by a signifier that, for some, was another example of a deficit approach to youth-at-risk which firmly, and publicly, placed responsibility for avoiding social support payments on the shoulders of youth regardless of the ‘social landscapes’ of their lives (Ball et al. 2000). Thus the line of flight has been segmented, divided into successive proceedings with the risk that the deterritorialization sinks into a black hole (Deleuze and Guattari 1987).

to know in advance if such a reterritorialization will occur and this is why an approach of ‘alogical consistencies’ is the only way to proceed:

The reason is simple. It is because no one, not even God, can say in advance whether two borderlines will string together or form a fiber, whether a given multiplicity will or will not cross over into another given multiplicity, or even if given heterogeneous elements will enter symbiosis, will form a consistent, or cofunctioning, multiplicity susceptible to transformation. No one can say where the line of flight will pass. . . . We are all too familiar with the dangers of the line of flight, and with its ambiguities. The risks are ever-present, but it is always possible to have the good fortune of avoiding them. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p.250)

In this instance, such good fortune did not prevail. For the Executive Officer the decision taken toward the end of 2004 to add Promotions to the core work of the LLEN would become underscored as the means to engage with the dangers of the line of flight and its ambiguities. With the evolution of the Jobs 4 Kids Campaign it had became imperative to find mechanisms to reconnect ‘real employers’ with the SGR LLEN approach of making ‘multiplicities,’ forging lines of intensity which would draw on and build the desire of employers to work towards ‘jobs for kids.’ This perspective was reinforced by the consultant who had worked on the Jobs 4 Kids Campaign Business Plan who declared that ‘this LLEN is a big light hiding under a bushel. And it’s time we lifted the bushel.’ Thus the decision to invest what limited funds were available for promotion in a campaign specifically targeted at industry along with a promotion campaign specifically targeted at the ERG itself. These campaigns would aim to generate a greater

She continues. ‘So I am also saying to other key people what I have just said to you. Because they need to help me manage this now around the message that gets out there. And I’ve said that I don’t care if I never hear “LLEN” but the rallying thing is Jobs 4 Kids and that’s what has to control it.’

understanding of the need for a post compulsory education, training and employment sector and a trust about how such a sector could contribute to the creation of jobs for kids through LLEN initiatives. For example, throughout 2004 the Vocational and Applied Learning party worked closely with a local employer who could not grow his business as he could not recruit suitable apprentices. At the same time, the local secondary school could not get apprenticeships for some of its students. By brokering this arrangement throughout 2004 while the employer expanded his business, six students were ‘groomed’ both academically and vocationally (with the involvement of the employer) to take up full-time apprenticeships in 2005. Importantly, promotion would also focus on maximising the connections with G21 and the economic

development strategies of local governments in the region. Yet the question of whether this LLEN, or any LLEN, would be able to forge a sustainable and active engagement of a range of employers in the emerging post compulsory sector continued to be debated leading the Department to ask, ‘Will this work? Nothing else has.’ At the same time, the LLEN was about to be handed a major opportunity, and a tense challenge, with the announcement by the federal government of its policy to establish 26 Australian Technical Colleges, one in the Geelong region. That is the final loom I wish to weave and it is to that weaving that I now turn my attention.